The Nobel laureate takes some impressive turns through literary and social history as he pleads for a new eroticism and a new humanity. In the authoritative but gentle voice of a mature literary figure who knows his stuff, Paz (The Other Voice, 1991, etc.) elucidates the ways in which societies—mainly Western, but some Asian—have constructed eroticism using the raw material of sex. From ancient Greece through the Middle Ages, the early modern period, and the Cold War to the present, he shows how notions of love, romance, and the erotic have changed. Though at times this long historical account bogs down in the details of specific writers and poems, Paz does an admirable job of maintaining interest by drawing comparisons and restating premises. The aim here is more than providing a lesson in literary history. Paz's real purpose is to come around to the present with the message that eroticism and love must change now as they have changed throughout history. Capitalism, he charges, has made of the body not just a commodity—that, he shows, has been done from time immemorial—but a marketing tool, ``turn[ing] Eros into an employee of Mammon.'' Stripped of its sacredness, the modern body is a soulless collection of functions and activities, says Paz. He finds hope, though, in the voices of scientists who believe they have reached the limits of their ability to explain the world and in those sublime moments when we discover ``the unity of life'' in the carnal embrace. Ultimately, Paz can only plead for companions willing to seek out a glimpse of the ``pure vitality'' that is love, but he does so elegantly. Brimming with insight, thoughtfulness, and sincerity, Paz's essays are a poetic road map to the past, present, and future of love.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-15-100103-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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